and regulated
progress; and without this discipline the ARMY, or the power that
holds this incongruous Nation together, will dissolve, as you may now
see, while the whole Empire will fly to pieces. My strong Ministers
were too physical and myopic to look beyond their noses. They were
afraid to seem afraid of _truth_,--and they even accused me of
plotting with Kazantsev and Feodorov against the life of my Minister
of Finance,--always excuses for fomenting discontent! They never
seemed to realize that the HAPPINESS of the PEOPLE meant the SECURITY
of the CROWN. As a matter of fact the only loyal supporters I ever had
around me were my wife and family besides a few others in the service
of the State. When I announced my war aims on the Pacific for the
benefit of my people my leading Minister had the audacity to obtrude
upon my privacy at Tsarskoye Selo and demand that I withdraw the
manifesto. This piece of impudence cost me the decision in that war.
That magniloquent Minister, with his versatile Irish amanuensis, not
only turned my mother against me, but he had the temerity to demand
that I dismiss my best agent, Azeff, who alone kept me advised of the
machinations of the Social Revolutionists, who, in turn, accused me of
murdering my uncle Sergius--the greatest theologian of the age. As I
recall the time, now, I am, of course, convinced that the only _real
friend_ I had among those Social Revolutionists was BURTZEV,--but
I understood him too late!'... My prisoner spoke regretfully. His
voice was soft and courteous, breaking at times into the altisonance
of the tragic muse. He does not think that any act of his can be
wrong; the mere fact that HE ran counter to accepted standards
divests, in his mind, the act itself of turpitude. That seems to be
the way he looked upon his former Eastern encrouchments. That's the
way he justified his subterranean deals with the KAISER; and he even
goes so far as to assert that '_if the Vyborg-Bjoerkesund treaty had
not been denounced the present war would not have happened_.' He
speaks of this a little passionately, scorning the very memory of
Count Witte for 'questioning the morality of that arrangement.'
That great Minister my prisoner refers to as '_an uncouth bully who
bellowed like a mad bull_.' In this respect it is my impression that
the ex-Empress indorses his state of mind. What he likes she will
place in the superlative; what he merely hates, _she_ elevates to
positive abhorren